Health Care; Salt and Light

Our friends to the south of us are currently embroiled in a debate over the future of socialized medicine. In the United States health care has been historically in the hands of the private sector. In recent years, private health insurers, in the form of HMOs have entered the marketplace and have added a new dimension of complexity. Currently, there is no state option and private citizens have over 1700 insurance choices to tailor a health plan. Currently it is the fact that private citizens have a choice that allows individuals to exercise individual liberty in the selection of their health care.

President Obama’s desire is to control individual liberty under the guise of a modified health care system. We have a health care system in Canada that is seriously flawed but the overall ethos is at least noble. It does have the best intentions of Canadians at heart but is mired by a malaise that comes with anything that is driven by beauracrats rather than the free market. After having seen some key portions of Obama’s plan, the dignity of being an image bearer of God has been reduced to that of a factor of production. Everyone knows that individual cost of health care escalates during the latter years of life. That is where the bulk of expense comes into play. At least two items of Obama’s plan merit our attention as Christians.

First, after individuals reach their senior years and require expensive surgical care, Obama proposes that a cost benefit analysis be done to see if the money spent to prolong life or improve quality of life best serves the common good. If you are unfortunate enough to be deemed not worthy of saving, then low cost pain management measure may be one’s only method of recourse regardless of ability to pay. You may not be able to opt for private treatment.

Second, and closely related to the first point, is that in addition to controlling the health choices of individuals, there is a  horrific spectre of mandatory  end of life counselling feature in his plan. According to the bill before Congress, individuals would be required to meet with a counselor every five years in order to discuss end of life options. The details of what this counselling would entail has not been published, but it would be safe to assume that at least, the State has a vehicle to explain and justify to individuals why needed but costly treatment is being denied. At worst, it would an indoctrination session to persuade the elderly that they have an obligation to the State to end their lives and eliminate their health care costs from the public coffers. Either way it infringes on individual liberty and places the State in  a godlike status.

Normally, this is not the kind of issue we discuss at Sola Scriptura. Our goal is to promote the Doctrines of Grace and the grand themes of Scripture. However, this issue hilites the stark contrast of worldviews that are at play here. Capitalism has always been vilified as the financial bully that reduces human worth to a line item on a balance sheet. This criticism has not been totally undeserved, but generally western capitalism, through financial prosperity, has given people the freedom and liberty to make their own choices of lifestyle with no reference to any government agency. What this bill does, is reduce human beings to a factor of production that brutalizes human dignity on a national scale by the very government that claims to have the best interests of its citizens at heart. Not since the days of slavery has imageo dei been under such tyrannical assault.

Historically, the Church has always run counter culture in the face of State brutality. It was the early Church that developed the first operation rescue in the Roman Empire. Our early brothers and sisters retrieved abandoned infants that had been placed on road sides to die by their Roman parents. It has been Christians that developed the first hospitals to care for the sick regardless of religious or ethnic stripe. It has been the Church that has been the haven of education and learning developing the University as a place to cultivate the mind.

As ominous as Obama’s plan sounds, this strikes me as an opportunity for the modern Church to take its place in history to run intentionally counter culture in the care of the elderly and the marginalized. As salt and light bearers it will be our privilege and challenge to present some kind of practical alternative that says, all people are created in the likeness of their creator and as such deserve the dignity and respect accorded to us by God almighty. What that alternative will look like should be a subject of much prayer and thoughtful planning.

May the God of all Glory use His Church powerfully in the days ahead as we seek to bring the message of the Gospel to our land.